Todd Haley time here is down to one week!

This time next week he can begin packing his office supplies and begin the hiring process for a HC position somewhere. Face it, Haley and Ben dont gell well....PERIOD! Ben is not a "dink & dunk" guy, and Haley woldnt open the playbook and throw downfield. This season (look it up) the Steelers threw downfield (20 yards plus) the least amount of times in the NFL (beleive ESPN had that stat) and even as of yesterday WR's were openly commenting on it. (Wallace was in an interview saying they needed to throw downfield not to him only, but to the WR's period.) Ben looked very uncomfrtable ALL year in this offense, and yesterday he was never in a grove which he had said several times this year when HE wanted to go to the "hurry up" and Haley said "NO." Watching last weeks game when back to back run plays were called Ben was could be seen on TV saying "I didnt want to run the ball" after the play gained 1 yard. Haley just never felt right in Pittsburgh, and the offense proved that! Good Luck Todd.....................

 

This right here.

Im a Bruce Arians "apologist", but Im against sending Haley packing after just one year (or even two) ESPECIALLY with the way the O line was decimated with injuries (just like Arians last year in Pgh).

 

The Steelrs shouldn't have to get a OC who has schemes (that may not play to the strengths) to protect their $100million dollar QB cause of a terrible o line and maybe o line coaching, instead they should be playing with a scheme that benefits the strengths of Ben and go out get a o line for him. Every year he takes a beating it's pathetic. No more next man up go out and get the guys who can protect our QB. I don't know if anyone noticed but it is now 2 seasons in a row where our season has ended because of a injury to Ben.

 

Considering the injury bug we get every year to the o-line, bringing in a new OC to implement an offense with our big-headed QB would take more than one season. The "dink and dunk" offense he was using wasn't there to be the total offense, it was to teach Ben how to use checkdowns and find the open RB or TE when the deep receivers aren't open. If Ben would buy into Haley's program, which is also designed to keep him healthy, this offense could use the little dump passes to open up the deep balls Ben so desperately wants. Don't forget, a "dink and dunk" type offense made New England look silly when we played them last season.

 

Open up the playbook?Why would Haley do that as our WR'S can't get off the line and when they do they can't catch it.....When we go scramble drill Wallace leads the Safety over the top right to the play,,,if he wanted to get deep all he had to do is break and go deep.....When Wallacee seen the ball ws to high why not turn and run and drill the Safety he ran in front off.....Wallace was the major key to us not making the post season,,he ran bad routes and never tried to stop a pick ....Fight for the damn ball ....

Haley put in a very good offense and Ben and his buddy Wallace didn't really want it to work....Ben looked at Redman wide open and refused to make the easy throw,,,Ben and Wallace should have both been benched after the Dallas play,a poor route and a poor ball and neither player took respsonsibility,blame the OC,,,yeah right,,,do your damn job....

 

The only way Haley leaves the Steelers this year is if he interviews for and is hired to a head coaching position. The Steelers FO/ownership does not work that way, folks. They just don't. He has at least next year and probably MORE to continue to build this offense. It doesn't matter how many times you post that he'll be gone after just one year - it won't make it happen. Get used to Haley's offense because we're going to be seeing it at least for the near future.

 

Gotta love the idiotic knee jerk reactions especially from those that seemed to have a labotomy post game 7.

 

With that garbage O-line Ben didn't have enough time to wait for his receivers to go deep, for the times that Ben did have time, Wallace dropped 90% of them. Get rid of Wallace and keep Plaxico at least he can catch.

 

Completely agree! You have an egg head QB who doesn't want to learn the play book yet he is supposed to expand it?

 

Exactly. It's kind of hard to build something if you keep firing the guys that you want to build it.

 

But this has got to be a two way street. Haley should be willing to compromise, BUT so should Ben. Ben was doing pretty dang well the first half of the season when he was following Haley's gameplan. Many were talking about Ben as a possible MVP candidate so he was having some success under Haley's offensive methodology. It seems to me that at some point Ben gave up on the more conservative style that Haley employs.

 

When BA was fired and Haley hired - I made a post that warned people to expect a bumpy ride in 2012 from the offense. Why? Because it was a change of SYSTEM. As "easy" as it may sound, and as exciting as it may seem to change coordinators, it is never a seamless process. I honestly do not think that the offense was able to fully master Haley's schemes even through the 4-game winning streak. Ben's injury set them back even more. They now have a long off-season to continue to work on the terminology and execution of the offense as Haley has designed it. Ben will get better at calling the plays and directing the team. The receivers and backs will get better at running routes and hitting holes. The O-line will get better at their blocking schemes. Next year will be an incredible opportunity for improvement and increased mastery of Haley's offense. This year's struggles should NOT have been a surprise. Instead, they should have been expected. Successes that we saw were just a hint of things to come as the offense becomes more accustomed to what they need to do. This does NOT excuse the lack of execution that we witnessed. That is still inexcusable. However, I truly feel that we'll see improvement next year and the chance to be dominant on both sides of the ball.

 

Haley should be going to Ben and asking him whats working and whats not working. Then adjust his play book according. It shouldnt be, heres the play, figure out how youre going to make it work. On the flip side of that, Ben shouldnt be questioning whether its a pass or run play as long as its one that works.

I again with building the OL. But its been stand too many times by Ben, he holds onto the ball too long and the OL breaks down. Dont know how to fix that problem.

 

I agree here. I wouldn't let Haley go after one year. We don't want to have a revolving door of OC's.

 

The only way to exspand the play book with Ben at qb would be to add some cartoons to it! Ben is the smae qb he was when we drafted him but slower. Probably a lot of the blame goes to Arians but he is gone so Ben hit the filmroom or maybe you can be the ba k-up ,most of them do not study the game much either. Love Ben but I love the Steelers more time for some tough love for Ben.Too many late game losing ints.

 

Norv Turner will be the Steelers OC (now I will duck for cover)

 

Norv Turner? Ouch … anyway, I'm still sticking with my statement. Haley will become a HC somewhere next season and we will find another OC. It's not a knee jerk reaction as some of you suggest but it's beat summed up like this- think back to your dating days ( for those of you not settled) when you were dating somebody and although you had some fun times here and there, you argued too much, had more bad days than good, and other than some hot sex ( TD s in this case) you really were miserable. Now, eventually, in the end you broke up and moved on because you weren't meant to be. Haley is just not meant to be. Same reason they took so long to hire him, as it was never a unanimous hire. Haley is about to be an "ex" of this team or look for a whole lot more "bad dates" and a lot less " hot sex!"

 

Thats the most ridiculous thing I have ever read on a Steelers Message Board.

Good lord.

It's more like when a 6 year old (Ben) with no dicipline has a new teacher and was able to get away with anything with the previous teacher but the new teacher shouldn't put up with it.

 

All of those things are true. I think Ben "bought in" to the scheme somewhat early on, but went back to the "old way" about the time of the Kansas City game.
You also have to consider that Wallace's holdout held him back from really knowing the offense and disrupted his and Ben's timing...which they never really seemed to get down.
Since he is a lazy route runner and really only has his speed to get away from DBs, he struggled with this offense.
Really, it seemed that Heath was the only "receiver" who could quickly get open the majority of the time. That's why he had such a great year.

It's obvious that opposing defenses also adjusted to stop us from throwing the deep ball so much (scheme, playing off the ball, double coverage, blitzing more to disrupt our makeshift O-line and get to Ben more quickly).
Ben would have been sacked even more this year is our offensive scheme didn't force him to get rid of it sooner. He held on to the ball too much recently and has made some poor choices (to say the least) as a result.
In spite of this, we went for long passes in every game...it just didn't work most of the time. How many bad throws, dropped passes or near misses did we have? Seems like a good 2-3 every game. We did connect on a few too. Don't use last season's stats for this one...there were 3+ games without Ben. Perhaps, compare the averages to the 2nd half of last season when Wallace disappeared. I don't have the stats...just making an educated observation.

I think Haley's offense attempted to take advantage of what was given to us. When we racked up the injuries, it took away too many weapons for us to be successful.
We also seemed to have a lazy team attitude and lacked execution far too often. I could see so many plays that almost worked but failed due to stupid mistakes.
Having said that...Haley is not off the hook. I would like to dump the "slow-developing" run plays and hit the hole more quickly. They are a great change-of-pace, but not all the time.
I absolutely hate the "empty backfield" plays. Sure, every once in a while they are good, but let's just tell the defense to pin their ears back because half the playbook is out of the picture...especially on 3rd and 1 when we can run just about anything.

There's no way Haley gets canned after just one season. Yeah, I'd like for him to tweak the running game some and go downfield a little more, but we can make his offense sing...we just have to be on the same page and be healthy.

 

I do not remember Haley throwing those interceptions that lost both games. Ben needs to buy into the system or get out of the system. He has not bee right since his return and probably needs until next season to get it together because he sure doesn't have it now.